A Sick and Unproductive America: The New Norm

The U.S. spends more per capita—$8,713 per person annually—on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet we are increasingly a nation of people who are getting chronically sicker with each year that passes.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is defined as “the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period.” It is a “broad measurement of a nation’s overall economic activity.”1In the past decade, economic growth in the United States—as reflected by GDP—has risen as high as 2.7% in 2006 and dropped to as low as -2.8% in 2009. For the most part, though, the norm has been growth of between 2% and 2.5% annually.

During 2011-2015, the U.S. economy posted GDP growth of 1.6%, 2.3%, 2.2%, 2.4% and 2.4% respectively.23U.S. GDP growth during 2006-2010 was more erratic—2.7%, 1.8%, -0.3%, -2.8% and 2.5% respectively.2The last time U.S. GDP growth surpassed 3% was in 2005 when the rate was at 3.3%. In 2004, the rate hit 3.8%. It is generally believed by economists that the “optimal” rate of growth for GDP is between 2% and 4%.4 So that would mean that the U.S. economy has been on the low side of optimal of late. The understanding is that the economy is healthy, but under-performing.

The recent performance of the U.S. economy has been particularly sluggish if you compare it to the annual GDP growth rates of the 1980s and 1990s. During that period, it was not unusual to see GDP growth of more than 3% and even 4% per year. In 1984, GDP growth reached 7.3%. Between 1996 and 2000, the U.S. economy grew by 3.8%, 4.5%, 4.4%, 4.7% and 4.1% respectively.2

It is no wonder then that you often hear Americans talk nostalgically about the “good old days” when the economy was booming, there were plenty of jobs for everyone, and wages were increasing at a healthy clip. But this nostalgia is sometimes muted by the realization that those good old days may be permanently confined to days gone by—for many reasons, including the rise of China and India as major economic competitors, but also the changing nature and health of the U.S. population.

Clearly, the largest portion of the U.S. population—the “baby boomer” generation—is quickly aging and retiring, with many dying too early. In the process, the sons and daughters of the “greatest generation” are becoming less productive. This has an obvious negative impact on overall U.S. productivity, and thus GDP growth.

This means that younger generations must be prepared to fill the void left by the boomers and be able to fuel future economic growth cycles. However, that is probably not going to happen because the child and younger adult population in America is very sick, sicker than any other generation in U.S. history.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

As of 2012, about half of all adults—117 million people—had one or more chronic health conditions. One of four adults had two or more chronic health conditions.5

So what about young adults or teenagers? Here’s what the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Adolescent Health says:

About 31 percent of adolescents suffer from at least one moderate or severe chronic condition such as asthma, depression, or ADD/ADHD.6

Worst of all are our children. According to HealthDay News:

One in every two U.S. children now grapples at some time with a chronic health condition, such as asthma, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or obesity…7

Even worse, the poor health situation for America’s children isn’t showing signs of abating.8The U.S. infant mortality rate is nothing to be proud of or comforted by and public health officials have no answers about why so many babies are dying before their first birthday. America one of the highest infant mortality rates of any developed country.9

Then there is the real blockbuster of a crisis: autism. According to research scientist Stephanie Seneff, PhD of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), by 2025, half of the children in the U.S. will be diagnosed with some form of autism.10

The U.S. spends more per capita—$8,713 per person annually—on healthcare than any other country in the world,11yet we are increasingly a nation of children and adults who are getting sicker with each year that passes. The public health prognosis for our population is poor and consequently so is the outlook for our economy—unless we start to fully explore, understand, and resolve the root causes for what ails us and our elected leaders begin to make choices that will reverse the downward trend. Otherwise, who is going to fill all those job vacancies and do the work and create the kind of innovation needed to sustain and keep our economy stable and growing?

This soul searching process cannot be performed honestly without taking a hard look at vaccines, mandatory vaccination programs and the questionable science that underpins the current vaccination paradigm. The alternative is to resign ourselves to being a society of sick and unproductive people forever preoccupied with dreams of the past.

8 Responses to "A Sick and Unproductive America: The New Norm"

Jo June 1, 2016 at 6:00 am

I’m sure it’s all a big accident and no one knows why Americans are so debilitated…I mean, as part of the ‘herd’ I believe everything the government tells me, (without question) and I rely on the bureaucrats (you know, ‘the experts’) to tell me what to do, when to do it, and why I’m going to do it.
Why would I want to take responsibility for my own life and the lives of my family when all that will do is rock the government boat?
After all, the system exists to help the herd –not to keep it penned in and/or drive it off the cliff when the shepherds deem it is expedient.
I mean, what do you take us for…[gasp, gulp]…conspiracy theorists?

As Mark Twain said: “If you don’t read the newspapers you are uninformed, but if you do, you are misinformed.” He also said: “It is easier to fool people, then to convince them that they have been fooled”. (pride again is what keeps us from learning from our mistakes) What these 2 quotes said explains why America is in the mess we are in. If people are unaware, then most likely they will be unaware that they are unaware. Bravo to websites like http://www.thevaccinereaction.org, http://www.mercola.com, http://www.naturalnews.com, http://www.lewrockwell.com, http://www.nomoregames.net and http://www.wheredidthetowersgo.com
The first step to getting the USA out of this mess is to educate oneself about what we don’t know and should know. A well educated citizenry is a well armed citizenry. There is a battle going on out there, and it requires courage to fight back all the nonsense being thrown at us by the media and by our own govt and by big business and by big pharma and by big farma, and by big banks. Be informed, and stand up to those who want you to stay misinformed and uninformed.

I could love your sarcasm if it wasn’t so true for so many people. I guess that is the point; keep them sick, keep them dumb. But I know people I would judge as smart who have bought the con. Go figure!

Change the environment, change behavior. Lifetime indoctrination is constant war on the mind. It begets true believers. Those bureaucrats/experts/scientists who claim to revere no god are lying to themselves. They revere their indoctrination. They bow at its altar and assume their alter. Unable to think for themselves, they are used by those who think they are their ‘betters’, the family lineages designated to come through to the brave, new world.
The rest are ‘supernal refuse’.

If every person reading this article would send a link to their Governor, Senator and Representative’s FB or Twitter page, it would bring to their attention what life in America looks like right now, not to mention what horrors await our next generation.

With a future of sick and intellectually challenged children and young people, our Military may be weaker and less able to defend our country.

Even an ivy-league University will have to compete for the best and the brightest students and may need to fill their classrooms educating foreign students instead.

We are lucky that a great deal of the “baby boomer” generation is still alive, as they can attest to what it is actually like to have had measles, mumps and chicken pox and now enjoy lifelong natural immunity all without a vaccine schedule that is absolutely insane!

@ autistic mom: our military is not fighting for OUR country, no one is attacking us! So many people need to be educated about the real reason we have a military, most of all our presidential candidates need to be educated – because they see “defense spending” as a way to help waste our money. Keep our military people in the USA and IF WE ARE EVER ATTACKED, then we defend ourselves and our military personnel will actually be here to do it, not on a base somewhere 10,000 miles away. Do you know there are over 900 military bases scattered throughout the world that have no reason for being? No reason at all. They are adding fear to the world, not comfort. Is that what you think of when you think “military”??

Also, let’s keep our next generation OUT of the ivy-league colleges who preach nothing but the same crap our kids learn in any public school (read: gubmint school teaching common core). Ivy league schools produce idiots like the Bush family and the Clintons and the Obama’s. Do we really want more people like them? Hardly.

Here’s a start, autistic mom: read the book (in kindle in you have it) by Roger Stone called The Clintons’ War on Women, and also read the book by Russ Baker called Family of Secrets. If you can get through those two books and still feel the same about America, I’ll be glad to meet you in person and eat my felt cowboy hat right in front of you.

Also, start following alternative reading sites (rather than mainstream) like LewRockwell.com and anything from the Ron Paul Institute, LibertyPen.com and a few more like them. Educate yourself with sources of reality, not sources of Disneyesque futurama.

This article makes some good points, but the impact of health on economic growth goes well beyond the issues covered.

Our economy is being increasingly cannibalized by health care costs, as their portion of GDP continues to grow and approaches 20%. As health care becomes more expensive, it makes it harder for employers to hire people and to give them raises, as their resources get diverted into paying for health care. As more resources go into health care, fewer are available for generating the type of economic activity that will truly make the country more prosperous in the future.

Also, GDP is a very flawed measure of economic health. One major problem with it is that it counts government spending on “services” on an equal footing with private spending. Really, much of the growth in recent years has been in government spending at the expense of more productive private investment. In reality, much of government spending is either unproductive or anti-productive (e.g. the bulk of its “security” spending) and should not be counted in any meaningful measure of economic vitality.